“Busy”

You’re not that busy. It’s a favorite retort of the scorned significant other or annoyed still-around-the-way pal from way-back-when, frustrated at what ought to be a simple, intimate connection. A hello takes a only a few minutes, but sometimes it’s a hard to give. Surviving daily often feels like an achievement in a world constantly offering trauma atop of the scar tissue of the ones survived. Amidst it all, maintaining connections feels more draining that it is restorative.
Saba’s “Busy” occupies that same space multitudes of black men navigate through, but that he’s one of many doesn’t negate his perspective’s validity.

The yearning that threads through “Busy” has given a clarity right down to the wistful production. In the opening bars, Saba spends the opening bars briefly reflecting on his struggles with depression before flashing back through failed romances. That latter half may read as minor for a song preoccupied with isolation, but it’s natural to hold on to memory when you’re aware of life’s impermanence, which is what Saba alludes to when he references his cousin John Walt’s murder: “Jesus got killed for our sins, Walter got killed for a coat,” he says as a coarseness grips his voice.

Saba doesn’t find much recourse in personal relationships afterward; there’s a bitterness that trails behind the line “Niggas askin' me how tour was, knowin' I been home like two months.” “Busy” offers no happy resolution other than a distant hope, but the sunlight isn’t always the point. Though he was reintroduced as a joyful voice when Chance the Rapper brought him to “Colbert” to perform “Angels” Saba’s strength is how his writing tints that light with the specificity of his experience. “Busy”—an insular gaze with a window—is another strong example of that gift.